The social-cost gambit will allow the Administration to claim an enormous economic benefit for any greenhouse gas regulation that reduces carbon—such as new standards on existing coal plants (new plants are already being regulated out of existence), oil refineries or lawn mowers.This will also help to disguise the net cost of these rules in lost jobs, higher energy prices and less consumer choice.

I’ve written before about the incidents of starving polar bears in the eastern portion of the Southern Beaufort Sea (here, here, and here). For two or three years every decade since the 1960s, shorefast ice in the Eastern Beaufort (Fig. 1) has become too thick and compressed in the spring for ringed seals to maintain their breathing holes, so most or all of them presumably go elsewhere — as seals did in Greenland when ice got too thick there (Vibe 1965). With few or no seal pups born during March and April in thick ice years, some bears had a hard time finding enough food: starving bears and dying cubs were the result.